Some twenty demons and ghosts wander across this hanging scroll, drawn in loose black ink lines with a few washes. Some have round, staring eyes, some have beaks, one hunches over an open book, and a pair of monsters rides a goat-like creature. In the upper background, much smaller, is a quiet mountain hut with a tree beside it.
The painter is Takai Kōzan (1806-1883), who came from a wealthy sake-brewing and farming family in Obuse, in what is now Nagano Prefecture. He took over the family business in 1840 but preferred Zen practice and a wide circle of artistic friends, among them Katsushika Hokusai, who stayed in Obuse in his old age and whom Kōzan treated as a teacher. Hundreds of Hokusai's study drawings for his pupil survive.
According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kōzan said that from the 1870s on he painted demons because they appeared to him in hallucinations whenever he closed his eyes to rest or sleep. From then until his death he painted almost nothing else. The result is a scroll that feels rapid and half-conscious, in the long Japanese tradition of yokai painting that draws monsters with as much humor as menace.
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